Popular low-cost airline temporarily ending route from Springfield

A new popular airline is temporarily ending service at the local airport after less than a year for one of their two routes.

Breeze Airways, a low-cost airline headquartered in Salt Lake City, Utah, has been busy adding flights to its roster of 29 states in the past couple of months, but the company plans on shuttering one of its flights: the nonstop service from Abraham Lincoln Capital Airport in Springfield to Tampa International Airport in Florida.

The planned end of nonstop service to the popular destination will be on August 12, 2024, according to Breeze, but it won’t be forever. According to Breeze to communications specialist Ryan Williams, the flights to Tampa were seasonal for the summer and will be returning in 2025.

More: Breeze Airways bringing new service to Abraham Lincoln Capital Airport

“We had always planned for Springfield to Tampa to be a summer seasonal route,” Williams said. “This would be a seasonal hiatus … We don’t have a definitive date (on when the route will open again) on that but we are currently planning on next summer.”

The short-lived route lasted less than a year when Breeze was first announced at Abraham Lincoln Capital Airport in December of last year. Breeze for the time being still operates one other flight out of the airport, a non-stop trip to Orlando, Florida. The Orlando flights have been renewed until next May at least as purchasing windows for flyers.

“There aren't any changes with that route,” Williams said. “We moved it from selling until early 2025, extending it out until May.”

Breeze Airways was created in 2018 and began service in May of 2021 to provide non-stop service to the two major central Florida airports – Orlando International Airport and Tampa International Airport.

The carrier tends to target mid-size cities for non-stop flights and has added 56 total cities to their flight roster; however, throughout 2022 and 2023 four flights have been permanently canceled by Breeze in Texas, Tennessee and Oklahoma.

Claire Grant writes about business, growth and development and other news topics for The State Journal-Register. She can be reached at [email protected]; and on X (Formerly known as Twitter): @Claire_Granted

This article originally appeared on State Journal-Register: Breeze Airways ending seasonal route from Springfield to Tampa in August